


Blanket Fort

by Shoulder_Devil



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Ficlet, Gen, I took a happy thing and made it sad, Introspection, and now I'm sharing it with you, fluff made angst, references to past canonical character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2020-03-26 14:27:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19007659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shoulder_Devil/pseuds/Shoulder_Devil
Summary: Almost on a whim, Jon cracked the door to the storage space under the stairs and had a peek inside. Inside was a veritable Room of Requirement for someone desperate for a lie down. Cushions and pillows surrounded an overstuffed futon in the corner of the closet turned hideaway.Jon stumbles across a holdover from a happier time in the Archives





	Blanket Fort

 

Jon pushed up his glasses to rub his eyes. God, he was exhausted. The ten fitful minutes he managed at his desk earlier left him worse off than before. There was always the cot but Melanie had laid claim to it while he was gone and wouldn’t be happy if she found him napping in her space. Up in the library, Diana had a couch in her office that might do. It was late enough everyone should have gone home hours ago and he could claim her office for a few hours. 

Instead of heading to the main stairs, Jon turned toward the back set over by the Discredited section. Setting up those shelves in the back corner of the Archive felt like a lifetime ago. Give his recent hospital stay, he supposed it technically was. 

Almost on a whim, Jon cracked the door to the storage space under the stairs and had a peek inside. Inside was a veritable Room of Requirement for someone desperate for a lie down. Cushions and pillows surrounded an overstuffed futon in the corner of the closet turned hideaway. Someone had even constructed a low canopy by hanging a fleece throw blanket from the ceiling and securing it to the walls with thumbtacks. Strands of colorful fairy lights sprung to life when Jon flipped the light switch, illuminating the dust in the air with a soft glow.  A jacket tossed haphazardly in the corner, Tim’s jacket, caught the Archivist’s eye and he knew what this place was.

He Knew. 

Snatches of Tim and Sasha leaked past the Archivist’s defenses no matter how hard he tried to keep them out. He Knew they had cleared the old boxes out of this space and claimed it as their own long before any of them knew what the Archives really were. They had come here to slack off a bit, individually to nap or together to gossip about celebrities and coworkers alike. Sasha had forbidden Tim from bringing in food after he’d left open a packet of biscuits that attracted mice. It didn’t stop him and she would playfully berate him every time she found a food wrapper and he would promise never to do it again. 

The knowledge of Sasha warped around the edges, stretched out like the thing that chased him through the tunnels. The Archivist could almost see her, the real Sasha. He tried to focus on her but only got a spike of pain in his skull for his trouble.

Tim would come down here to vent to her- to it, about him. When Jon was at the height of his paranoia, the thing that wasn’t Sasha would listen sympathetically to Tim. She was the first he told when he found out his boss was stalking him and his boss’s boss wouldn’t do anything about it. 

When it went missing, when Leitner killed it, Tim lost the closest thing he thought he had to an ally. He had no way of knowing it hadn’t been his friend for a very long time. The Archivist couldn’t help Seeing Tim in this room, holding a blanket that still held her scent to his chest as silent tears fell from his face. 

Jon gasped and stumbled backward through the threshold. The crystal clarity of the knowledge dulled but not nearly enough for him to pack the memories away somewhere safe. He longed for a dark place to lie down his throbbing head. He couldn’t bring himself to desecrate this space, no matter how exhausted he was nor how inviting the pillows.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I saw someone post about Tim and Sasha building an out of the way pillow/blanket fort where they would hang out and gossip about their coworkers. I took this wholesome headcanon and pumped it full of angst. 
> 
> It's what I do. 
> 
> Feel free to scream at me, I deserve it.


End file.
